I was just thinking of small changes and little tweaks that could make ship designing a little easier and less time-consuming. Here are my suggestions:

1) First of all let me say that i can't rotate neither the main map nor the ship designing window with the middle mouse button. It just doesn't work. That said i'm hoping that you add some hotkey or something so that anyone with this problem will be able to rotate. I don't mind so much about the main map but when designing ships it's a real drag rottating with the directional buttons on the screen.

2) I was thinking that we should be able to scale the different parts even if they are on the ship. This way ship design will get less time consuming and more fun in my opinion.

3) It would also be very nice if the hardpoints were implemented in a different way so as not to cover the whole ship preventing us from seeing underneath. There are some times where i can't find a spot for a part because there are so many hardpoints that the ship is covered in red! Maybe you could change their colour or make them a bit transparent or even both.

4) This is more of small feature request: I would like to be able to test my design before saving it. It could be like the battle screen minus the battle! There would be some options to test the aspects of the ship like: test weapons , test defences, manouvering, speed......

1-3 are things that in my opinion are needed to improve the overall designing experience. 4 isn't that important. I merely wrote just to make a suggestion.

So what do you think? I really want the first 3 ones.